Babel and the Ivory Tower: The Scholar in the Age of Science

Having come to the end of his own scholarly career, W. David Shaw felt out of place in the technological realm academia has become – where scholars increasingly model their work on that of scientists rather than the classical thinkers of the past, and where original ideas often only alienate the scholar, rather than enrich. Thus, is as much a eulogy as an elegy. Shaw reflects on the changes that have taken place in the academic sphere while philosophically enlarging our stock of fresh ideas about the competing claims of maps and models and open and closed capacities in higher learning. This is a fascinating and illuminating discussion of liberal and contemplative scholarship and adds significantly to the growing body of contemporary philosophical literature.